not one daring to look upon them. Lovers of learning have many fair
and pleasant diversions, if they can no other way keep in their canine
and brutish appetites when they see the table spread. The bawling of
such fellows as anoint wrestlers, and the opinion of pedagogues that it
hinders our nourishment and dulls one’s head to discourse of learning
at table, are indeed of some force then, when we are called upon to
solve a fallacy like the _Indus_ or to dispute about the _Kyrieuon_
at a feast. For though the pith of the palm-tree is very sweet, yet
they say it will cause the headache. To discourse of logic at meals is
not indeed a very delicious banquet, is rather troublesome, and pains
one’s head; but if there be any who will not give us leave to discourse
philosophically or ask any question or read any thing at table, though
it be of those things which are not only decent and profitable but
also pleasantly merry, we will desire them not to trouble us, but to
talk in this style to the athletes in the Xystum and the Palaestra,
who have laid aside their books and are wont to spend their whole time
in jeers and scurrilous jests, being, as Aristo wittily expresses it,
smooth and hard, like the pillars in the gymnasium. But we must obey
our physicians, who advise us to keep some interval between supper and
sleep, and not to heap up together a great deal of victuals in our
stomachs and so shorten our breath (lest we presently by crude and
fermenting aliment overcharge our digestion), but rather to take some
space and breathing-time before we sleep. As those who have a mind to
exercise themselves after supper do not do it by running or wrestling,
but rather by gentle exercise, such as walking or dancing; so when we
intend to exercise our minds after supper, we are not to do it with any
thing of business or care, or with those sophistical disputes which
bring us into a vain-glorious and violent contention. But there are
many questions in natural philosophy which are easy to discuss and to
decide; there are many disquisitions which relate to manners, which
please the mind (as Homer expresses it) and do no way discompose it.
Questions in history and poetry have been by some ingeniously called
a second course to a learned man and a scholar. There are discourses
which are no way troublesome; and, besides, fables may be told. Nay, it
is easier to discourse of the pipe and lyre, or hear them discoursed
of, than it is to hear either of them played on. The quantity of time
allowed for this exercise is till our meat be gently settled within us,
so that our digestion may have power enough to master it.
21. Aristotle is of opinion that to walk after supper stirs up our
natural heat; but to sleep, if it be soon after, chokes it. Others
again say that rest aids digestion, and that motion disturbs it. Hence
some walk immediately after supper; others choose rather to keep
themselves still. But that man seems to obtain the design of both, who
cherishes and keeps his body quiet, not immediately suffering his mind
to become heavy and idle, but (as has been said) gently distributing
and lightening his spirits by either hearing or speaking some pleasant
thing, such as will neither molest nor oppress him.
22. Medicinal vomits and purges, which are the bitter reliefs of
gluttony, are not to be attempted without great necessity. The manner
of many is to fill themselves because they are empty, and again,
because they are full, to empty themselves contrary to nature, being
no less tormented with being full than being empty; or rather, they
are troubled at their fulness, as being a hindrance of their appetite,
and are always emptying themselves, that they may make room for new
enjoyment. The damage in these cases is evident; for the body is
disordered and torn by both these. It is an inconvenience that always
attends a vomit, that it increases and gives nourishment to this
insatiable humor. For it engenders hunger, as violent and turbulent
as a roaring torrent, which continually annoys a man, and forces him
to his meat, not like a natural appetite that calls for food, but
rather like inflammation that calls for plasters and physic. Wherefore
his pleasures are short and imperfect, and in the enjoyment are very
furious and unquiet; upon which there come distentions, and affections
of the pores, and retentions of the spirits, which will not wait for
the natural evacuations, but run over the surface of the body, so that
it is like an overloaded ship, where it is more necessary to throw
something overboard than to take any thing more in. Those disturbances
in our bellies which are caused by physic corrupt and consume our
inward parts, and do rather increase our superfluous humors than bring
them away; which is as if one that was troubled at the number of Greeks
that inhabited the city, should call in the Arabians and Scythians.
Some are so much mistaken that, in order that they may void their
customary and natural superfluities, they take Cnidian-berries or
scammony, or some other harsh and incongruous physic, which is more fit
to be carried away by purge than it is able to purge us. It is best
therefore by a moderate and regular diet to keep our body in order,
so that it may command itself as to fulness or emptiness. If at any
time there be a necessity, we may take a vomit, but without physic or
much tampering, and such a one as will not cause any great disturbance,
only enough to save us from indigestion by casting up gently what is
superfluous. For as linen cloths, when they are washed with soap and
nitre, are more worn out than when they are washed with water only, so
physical vomits corrupt and destroy the body. If at any time we are
costive, there is no medicine better than some sort of food which will
purge you gently and with ease, the trial of which is familiar to all,
and the use without any pain. But if it will not yield to those, we may
drink water for some days, or fast, or take a clyster, rather than take
any troublesome purging physic; which most men are inclined to do, like
that sort of women which take things on purpose to miscarry, that they
may be empty and begin afresh.
23. But to be done with these, there are some on the other side who are
too exact in enjoining themselves to periodical and set fasts, doing
amiss in teaching nature to want coercion when there is no occasion
for it, and making that abstinence necessary which is not so, and
all this at times when nature requires her accustomed way of living.
It is better to use those injunctions we lay upon our bodies with
more freedom, even when we have no ill symptom or suspicion upon us;
and so to order our diet (as has been said), that our bodies may be
always obedient to any change, and not be enslaved or tied up to one
manner of living, nor so exact in regarding the times, numbers, and
periods of our actions. For it is a life neither safe, easy, politic,
nor like a man, but more like the life of an oyster or the trunk of a
tree, to live so without any variety, and in restraint as to our meat,
abstinence, motion, and rest; casting ourselves into a gloomy, idle,
solitary, unsociable, and inglorious way of living, far remote from the
administration of the state,—at least (I may say) in my opinion.
24. For health is not to be purchased by sloth and idleness, for those
are chief inconveniences of sickness; and there is no difference
between him who thinks to enjoy his health by idleness and quiet, and
him who thinks to preserve his eyes by not using them, and his voice
by not speaking. For such a man’s health will not be any advantage
to him in the performance of many things he is obliged to do as a
man. Idleness can never be said to conduce to health, for it destroys
the very end of it. Nor is it true that they are the most healthful
that do least. For Xenocrates was not more healthful than Phocion, or
Theophrastus than Demetrius. It signified nothing to Epicurus or his
followers, as to that so much talked of good habit of body, that they
declined all business, though it were never so honorable. We ought to
preserve the natural constitution of our bodies by other means, knowing
every part of our life is capable of sickness and health.
The contrary advice to that which Plato gave his scholars is to be
given to those who are concerned in public business. For he was wont to
say, whenever he left his school; Go to, my boys, see that you employ
your leisure in some honest sport and pastime. Now to those that are in
public office our advice is, that they bestow their labor on honest and
necessary things, not tiring their bodies with small or inconsiderable
things. For most men upon accident torment themselves with watchings,
journeyings, and running up and down, for no advantage and with no good
design, but only that they may do others an injury, or because they
envy them or are competitors with them, or because they hunt after
unprofitable and empty glory. To such as these I think Democritus
chiefly spoke, when he said, that if the body should summon the soul
before a court on an action for ill-treatment, the soul would lose
the case. And perhaps on the other hand Theophrastus spoke well, when
he said metaphorically, that the soul pays a dear house-rent to its
landlord the body. But still the body is very much more inconvenienced
by the soul, when it is used beyond reason and there is not care enough
taken of it. For when it is in passion, action, or any concern, it does
not at all consider the body. Jason, being some-what out of humor,
said, that in little things we ought not to stand upon justice, so that
in greater things we may be sure to do it. We, and that in reason,
advise any public man to trifle and play with little things, and in
such cases to indulge himself, so that in worthy and great concerns he
may not bring a dull, tired, and weary body, but one that is the better
for having lain still, like a ship in the dock, that when the soul has
occasion again to call it into business, “it may run with her, like a
sucking colt with the mare.”
25. Upon which account, when business gives us leave, we ought to
refresh our bodies, grudging them neither sleep nor dinner nor that
ease which is the medium between pain and pleasure; not taking that
course which most men do, who thereby wear out their bodies by the many
changes they expose them to, making them like hot iron thrown into cold
water, by softening and troubling them with pleasures, after they have
been very much strained and oppressed with labor. And on the other
side, after they have opened their bodies and made them tender either
by wine or venery, they exercise them either at the bar or at court,
or enter upon some other business which requires earnest and vigorous
action. Heraclitus, when he was in a dropsy, desired his physician to
bring a drought upon his body, for it had a glut of rain. Most men are
very much in the wrong who, after being tired or having labored or
fasted, moisten (as it were) and dissolve their bodies in pleasure,
and again force and distend them after those pleasures. Nature does
not require that we should make the body amends at that rate. But an
intemperate and slavish mind, so soon as it is free from labor, like a
sailor, runs insolently into pleasures and delights, and again falls
upon business, so that nature can have no rest or leave to enjoy that
temper and calmness which it does desire, but is troubled and tormented
by all this irregularity. Those that have any discretion never so
much as offer pleasure to the body when it is laboring,—for at such
times they do not require it at all,—nor do they so much as think of
it, their minds being intent upon that employ they are in, either the
delight or diligence of the soul getting the mastery over all other
desires. Epaminondas is reported wittily to have said of a good man
that died about the time of the battle of Leuctra, How came he to have
so much leisure as to die, when there was so much business stirring?
It may truly be asked concerning a man that is either of public employ
or a scholar, What time can such a man spare, either to debauch his
stomach or be drunk or lascivious? For such men, after they have done
their business, allow quiet and repose to their bodies, reckoning not
only unprofitable pains but unnecessary pleasures to be enemies to
nature, and avoiding them as such.
26. I have heard that Tiberius Caesar was wont to say, that he was a
ridiculous man that held forth his hand to a physician after sixty. But
it seems to me to be a little too severely said. But this is certain,
that every man ought to have skill in his own pulse, for it is very
different in every man; neither ought he to be ignorant of the temper
of his own body, as to heat and cold, or what things do him good, and
what hurt. For he has no sense, and is both a blind and lame inhabitant
of his body, that must learn these things from another, and must ask
his physicians whether it is better with him in winter or summer;
or whether moist or dry things agree best with him, or whether his
pulse be frequent or slow. For it is necessary and easy to know such
things by custom and experience. It is convenient to understand more
what meats and drinks are wholesome than what are pleasant, and to
have more skill in what is good for the stomach than in what seems
good to the mouth, and in those things that are easy of digestion than
in those that gratify our palate. For it is no less scandalous to
ask a physician what is easy and what is hard of digestion, and what
will agree with your stomach and what not, than it is to ask what is
sweet, and what bitter, and what sour. They nowadays correct their
cooks, being able well enough to tell what is too sweet, too salt, or
too sour, but themselves do not know what will be light or easy of
digestion, and agreeable to them. Therefore in the seasoning of broth
they seldom err, but they do so scurvily pickle themselves every day
as to afford work enough for the physician. For that pottage is not
accounted best that is the sweetest, but they mingle bitter and sweet
together. But they force the body to partake of many, and those cloying
pleasures, either not knowing, or not remembering, that to things that
are good and wholesome nature adds a pleasure unmingled with any regret
or repentance afterward. We ought also to know what things are cognate
and convenient to our bodies, and be able to direct a proper diet to
any one upon any change of weather or other circumstance.
27. As for those inconveniences which sordidness and poverty bring upon
many, as gathering of fruit, continual labor, and running about, and
want of rest, which fall heavy upon the weaker parts of the body and
such as are inwardly infirm, we need not fear that any man of employ or
scholar—to whom our present discourse belongs—should be troubled with
them. But there is a severe sort of sordidness as to their studies,
which they ought to avoid, by which they are forced many times to
neglect their body, oftentimes denying it a supply when it has done
its work, making the mortal part of us do its share in work as well as
the immortal, and the earthly part as much as the heavenly. But, as
the ox said to his fellow-servant the camel, when he refused to ease
him of his burthen, It won’t be long before you carry my burthen and
me too: which fell out to be true, when the ox died. So it happens to
the mind, when it refuses that little relaxation and comfort which it
needs in its labor; for a little while after a fever or vertigo seizes
us, and then reading, discoursing, and disputing must be laid aside,
and it is forced to partake of the body’s distemper. Plato therefore
rightly exhorts us not to employ the mind without the body, nor the
body without the mind, but to drive them equally like a pair of horses;
and when at any time the body toils and labors with the mind, then to
be the more careful of it, and thus to gain its well-beloved health,
believing that it obliges us with the best of things when it is no
impediment to our knowledge and enjoyment of virtue, either in business
or discourse.